The present invention relates generally to information handling systems and, more particularly, to a system and method for event monitoring and the detection of error conditions in such systems. It finds particular application in monitoring network communications between interconnected information handling systems, as well as the transfer of data within an information handling system.
Networks of interconnected information handling systems, such as computer systems, telecommunication equipment, and related devices, are widely used to provide increased computing power, sharing of resources, and communication between users. In communicating over a network, there are a number of errors or faults that can occur, including corruption of data, malfunctioning of a network device, faults in a data link, traffic overload on parts of the network, and so forth.
To cope with such errors, network management systems conventionally include an error monitoring function. Because not all errors will require remedial action, it is desirable to distinguish between intermittent or transient error conditions not requiring remedial action and real error conditions for which some remedial is, or is likely to be, necessary. To make this distinction, the prior art monitoring systems typically monitor the error rate and, for example, generate a warning when the error rate increases above some preselected rising threshold level and terminate the warning when the error rate falls below some preselected falling threshold level.
One shortfall of the error rate thresholding scheme of the prior art is that it does not account for trend and history. It would be desirable to examine the trend in the event stream in order to detect a potential error condition faster. Likewise, it would be desirable to examine the history of the event stream in order to determine more quickly when a potential error condition has stabilized and is no longer of concern.
One control scheme that takes trend and history into account is the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. PID controllers are widely used in industry and are generally implemented as hardware devices, especially as electrical circuits using resistors, inductors, and capacitors. Although such circuits could be modeled in software on a computer, the complexity of the math required to model a PID controller would render such software models large and, thus, costly to implement. Such a software model would be particularly difficult to implement in an embedded system or controller or other communication or information handling environments where program storage space and/or processing power are limited. Also, a software model does not provide a real-time quality since the mathematical calculations may require a number of seconds or minutes to complete. In a real-time application, such as in telecommunications equipment, such a wait is undesirable and, in some cases, unacceptable.
For the forgoing reasons, there is a need for an improved event monitoring system and method that can detect potential error conditions based on event trend and history. Additionally, there is a need for an event monitoring system and method that can rapidly determine when a potential error condition has stabilized and is no longer of concern.
It is to be understood that the following description of the invention is exemplary and explanatory only, and is not restrictive of the invention as claimed. The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate presently preferred embodiments of the invention, and, together with the description of the preferred embodiments given below, serve to explain the principles of the invention.